COLUMN: Aesthetic Time Warper

"You're not a real journalist, Shane," they say. "You just write silly columns about the internet and your cats."

That changes today.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a genuine scoop. A full-on, no-holds-barred, stop-the-presses piece of breaking news that could shake our fundamental understanding of the world, and it's all thanks to my relentless search of the truth.

Or maybe it's thanks to those tacos I ate too close to bedtime.

Either way, I was up late last night riding out a case of insomnia by pointlessly scrolling thru the TikTok app, watching moron after moron lip-sync and dance their way to fleeting moments of internet fame. That's when I found him -- perhaps the most important human being on our planet today.

Except I have no idea who he is. No one does. All we know is his TikTok handle, @aesthetictimewarper.

If Mr. Aesthetic is to be believed -- and who can you trust if not a complete stranger on the internet -- we're in for a doozy of a year.

You see, @aesthetictimewarper claims to be a time traveller from the year 2714 who has come back to 2021 in order to, well, tell us stuff.

Seems super legit to me. After all, if you lived in a future world with time travel, what would you do? Go back in time, kill baby Hitler, and stop World War II? Nah. Maybe you'd go to Max Yasgur's farm in 1969 and experience Woodstock first-hand? How boring. Would you jump to prehistoric times and see dinosaurs roaming the Earth? Blah.

No, if you lived 693 years in the future and had time travel capabilities, clearly the first thing you'd do is journey back to that one year when a killer virus plagued the earth and hop on a social media app to impress teenagers. Makes perfect sense to me. 

If I were trying to scam the world into believing I was a time traveller from the future, I'd offer some vague predictions that could easily come true. "Tomorrow, someone famous will die!" "Next week, a climate event will occur!" Then I'd find the nearest obituary and/or thunderstorm and go, "SEE? HEED MY WARNINGS, MORTALS!"

That's not how @aesthetictimewarper rolls. He goes for broke. Among his predictions on TikTok:

* On August 3rd, NASA will discover a "mirrored Earth, with opposite everything, including physics, gravity, and motion." Umm, ok. If NASA discovered a parallel Earth, I don't think they'd announce it with glee. They wouldn't even put that in Area 51. They'd put it in, like Area 58 or 59 at the very least. But what does "opposite motion" even mean? A world where everyone walks backwards? For a while, I entertained myself wondering what Opposite Shane might be doing right now. But if there's "opposite gravity," wouldn't that mean he'd be floating away into the empty vacuum of space? Bummer for him.

* On September 14th, "a Category 6 hurricane will hit South Carolina." Wow. This is especially impressive, considering there are only five categories of hurricanes. When someone pointed this out, @aesthetictimewarper revealed it'll be SO destructive, they'll have to make a sixth category. Dang. My buddy just moved to South Carolina. Bummer for him.

* On February 22, 2022, "three scuba divers will find the ruins of Atlantis, along with fish-human hybrids." To date, there is no mention as to whether or not these fish-people pair nicely with a white Zinfandel and some tartar sauce. If so, bummer for them.

Also: Bigfoot is real and lives in Brazil. Underground worms will attack us next decade, humans will soon develop superpowers, and aliens called Nozics will soon infiltrate the US government (but I'm pretty sure that one's already happened.)

As much as it pains me to admit, maybe @aesthetictimewarper is full of hooey. Then again, people would probably think I was full of hooey if I travelled back to 1850 and told everyone that in the future, you could log on to your phone and watch strangers lip-sync and dance. Then they'd ask me what a "phone" was.

I wouldn't answer, because I'd have already travelled back to the present. Time's a-wastin', and I've got an Atlantis Hotel to start constructing. Our restaurant will serve the best fried fish-people around. Senior, Nozic, and Sasquatch discounts available upon request.